Jamie's Tray-Baked Chicken with Creamed Spinach

By Chris,

Main ingredients:

• 6x Chicken breasts
• Maris Piper potatoes
• 400g Baby Spinach
• Garlic, Parmesan and Streaky Bacon

Ahh chicken and bacon, what a timeless combination! This recipe is a great use for a really good quality chicken breast, and a great way to introduce people to spinach - in the least healthy way possible... Many of Jamie's 30-Minute Meals are heavily reliant on herbs, but this one is worse than most, with four herbs employed, not to mention two spices and plenty of garlic.

Start off by boiling about a kilo of washed and diced potatoes, then fry a fistful of spring onions in olive oil. To the onions add three cloves of garlic, some thyme leaves, butter, nutmeg and a splash of boiling water. Next up, roll the chicken breasts in salt, pepper, olive oil, oregano and paprika, then fry in butter for two minutes on each side to seal in the juices. While these are going, wilt the spinach down in the pan with the onions.

Next up the chicken is moved to a baking tray, then lined with steaky bacon, and four lemon quarters are stuffed in, along with some rosemary and cherry tomatoes (which I forgot, d'oh!). The whole thing is then grilled at 200 degrees (gas mark six) for 14 minutes. Once the spinach has wilted down, pour on cream and grate over a decent helping of parmesan to make a nice gloopy sauce. Finally, dry off the potatoes by frying them in a pan for a few minutes with garlic, salt and rosemary.

This is one of the fiddlier 30-Minute Meals I've done so far, which took 45 minutes in total, but the potatoes, and chicken came out perfect and the spinach is tempting enough to turn even the most ardent veggiephobe into Popeye. 

Without the tomatoes (which will make a cracking salad tomorrow) it all came to a fairly reasonable £2.50 a head, including a bonus sixth chicken breast for everyone to fight over.

Best for... Using up all the frozen herbs in your freezer and introducing people to spinach

Taken from... Jamie Oliver - 30-Minute Meals

Helen says... Not spectacular but pretty tasty - and the timings made sure the chicken was perfectly cooked